ad hominem (I)

The contents of this post refer to a discussion in which i was involved at this blog site ... http://molecularphilosopher.blogspot.com under a March 22nd posting called "Brain Dead". Deciding that the next move i need to make in this game is long and boring i decided to right it over here at my site.

The specific question at hand is: Is claiming that someone has committed an ad hominem fallacy itself an ad hominem attack/argument.

The answer i will defend will say two things. First, it will say that yes, in some sense this is the case, but not in what we commonly term a "vicious" sense. Second, in terms of the vicious sense, i will conclude that it certainly can be the case that pointing out an ad hominem fallacy is nothing but an attack (or attack-like) argument, but that this is rarely actually the case. I hope to demonstrate some conditions under which it is and is not the case to make the distinction clear.

First ... my use of the word vicious (above and below) is used in the sense that someone might use it when he has been told his argument is circular. He can agree but say it is not thereby invalid because it is not viciously circular. What he means in this defense is roughly what i mean by my use of the word "vicious". This is a topic I may touch upon again later.

One last note ... the persons in the discussion at Molecular Revolution are literature and continental philosophy types. There are places where I may state that they do this or that wrong in their argumentive form, so i thought i would note that it is not oversight on their part but an intentional philosophical stance. That is, they would say i am wrong for making the distinction rather than correct against the error. Or, more broadly, you'll see that i and they often "talk past one another" because our base assumptions and programs are very significantly different.

Okay, preliminaries aside ....
The first topic i want to take up in relation to the whole case is the topic of rhetoric and the conflation of primary and secondary meanings of words.

I was once listening to a debate between a friend of mine and an acquaintance. The latter happened to be a Born-Again (or Augustinian) Christian. The debate moved into the realm of organ transplantation to save lives. My friend could not see how the Christian could be against an organ transplant procedure. The Christian’s response was that it was cannibalism.

Now, that is certainly true. The primary definition of cannibalism is (roughly) “taking a part from one thing and placing it in another”. It was, of course, the other definition that was “doing the work” in the Christian’s argument. We can approve of both these statements, that organ transplants are cannibalism and the cannibalism is wrong and still we need not conclude that organ transplants are wrong.

So … this is just a straw-man case, but it points out the kind of issue for which we will be looking.

Another example in less of a straw-man case would deal with minorities and the often-heard counter-claim that the minorities are being racist themselves when they do X, Y, or Z. Once again, the problem is that the one word, racism, is picking out two separate domains (that is, we are using more than one definition). There is a sense in which any decision made based on race is racism. But the racism that “needs to be combated” is a stranger claim than this. It needs to be combated due to the types of hatred and the possible results than occur, and these other pieces of the definition are not separatable from the stricter definition of racism. It is in reference to this more strict definition that it is claimed that minority populations cannot be racist (because the lack the proper form of power). [I don’t expect everyone reading this to accept that argument. But please note the form of the statement; it is a fairly common formal distinction. formal distinction.]

So … similar to the cannibalism case I can setup a syllogism in which choosing a suit and tie colors for someone based on the color of their skin is racism, and racism is morally wrong … therefore. I can accept both premises without accepting the conclusion because we have conflated meanings of the one word “definition” in making the case.

The main point to all this is … the path I plan to take to defend the first part of my answer … that noting an ad hominem fallacy is not, itself, a vicious breach of the “no ad hominem attacks” policy. That is, there is a sense in which it (noting an ad hominem fallacy) is itself an ad hominem, but not in the same sense in which we are concerned by the use of ad hominem attacks in standard logical debate.

[more coming]